Friday, March 27, 2020

My First Foray Into Distance Learning

For the past several years at school, I've been the person who organizes 7th Period (happy hour) and sends out an email telling everyone at which local establishment we'll be meeting for food, drinks, and socializing. 

Starting April 13th I'll be expected to deliver instruction to students, and one of the ways I'm looking at doing that is via the online meeting platform Zoom.  This means that I'd better get good at setting up, and notifying people about, these online meetings.  So the first meeting I'll run on Zoom will be today's virtual 7th period.

Hope to see everyone at 4 :-)

6 comments:

  1. Having taught online at a University for the last five years, it is interesting to see how many Brick & Mortar only Professors have to make the hasty conversion to online. Fortunately as we already have online offerings, we can utilize our Learning Management System for this purpose. However, for many other teachers this is not an option and they are left to find their own way. I hope Zoom works out for you.

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  2. Thanks, so do I!

    I earned my master's degree via distance learning. Imagine taking math classes that way! But I did. It was difficult, too--and I'm an intelligent, motivated, older person, and even I could get distracted by other web sites besides class. Now, imagine uninterested high schoolers whose lives are dictated by Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Bottom line: this will only work for the absolutely most motivated students.

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  3. Anonymous6:00 PM

    Hello from one of your former students! This last year I started working with the cooperative extension of my former university, and what an eye opening experience this "distance learning" experiment has been for our researching undergrads, as well as for our high school students who have programs through the extension (mine involves livestock, but we can't publically name names because apparently that's not allowed). This distance learning has shown which students and groups are the most dedicated and interested in their various research subjects and learning objectives. We are headed into week 3, and haven't lost the interest of our researchers, but with the announcement of a cancelled graduation, I'm sure we will lose a portion. Our highschoolers are predominantly from rural and agricultural families, who are either battling mother nature to maintain internet access or are bringing in their family's stock to battle food and dairy shortages. But somehow, all of them have checked in with me on Zoom, even if they missed the group, so that they dont fall behind. Since there are not too many, I've given them "office hours" within which they can set up a meeting. Hopefully your students keep their focus and keep their eyes on the prize, and realize that in the long run, a daily video, a daily check in, a daily round of practice problems aren't that much... they could be calling in while trying to move the herd or while fixing equipment and certainly not getting paid for it. This is sink or swim, and I hope those river kids keep their heads above water like these high desert kids are. Your students have the best teacher they could hope to find, hopefully they recognize how much worse it could be and choose the right course of action and involvement.

    Also as someone homeschooling a second grader on top of all that, I think all teachers should have 7th period paid for by the parents of their students. This is exhausting and I have no clue how anyone manages students who haven't chosen to be there. Yall need a round on us.

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  4. I think you have hit the nail on the head. The temptation to distraction is already a huge issue with high school students. By the way, this is also why homeschooling often fails for high school students. There are just some people who need a person standing over them watching them work. While many parents are home during the epidemic, there are just as many who are working and assuming that their kids are tuning in and doing the work. We all know what happens when you assume.

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  5. Anonymous, thank you for your kind words. I *do* wish you had identified yourself, though--perhaps you'll shoot me a brief email? I love to hear from former students, especially parents :-)

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  6. Just FYI be careful with your codes on Zoom. My husband has a friend who works in the CBO who held a meetup just to catch up and was warned by his IT people that lots of ZOOM meetings are being used as virtual backdoors. I'm wondering as well why Zoom is the go to app when there are others that have been used over the years. Of course until the end I clung to my Google Classroom site over other zippier formats. The devil you know.....

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